Posted By Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on January 21, 2025
By Tim Hepher
PARIS (Reuters) -The CEO of Europe's Airbus has told staff that the group ended 2024 in better shape than it feared when issuing a profit warning last summer, while warning of a deteriorating international environment and newly increased business risks.
Referring to group-wide performance, Guillaume Faury said in a memo seen by Reuters: "From an operational point of view, we finished the year in a better state than we feared when we changed our guidance to the financial markets" in July.
An Airbus spokesperson said it never comments on internal correspondence.
Airbus this month reported 766 jet deliveries, just shy of a targeted headline figure of "around 770", while claiming victory due to a margin for error contained in the language it had used. It remained ahead of rival Boeing for a sixth year.
Faury said activities would once again accelerate during the year and Airbus must improve quality and delivery deadlines.
Airbus Defence and Space and Airbus Helicopters had an "excellent commercial performance," Faury wrote.
But he called for vital progress in defence activities of both divisions and noted organisational changes in the Defence & Space unit, which recently simplified its structure.
In the letter, sent to the group's 150,000 staff shortly before U.S. President Donald Trump took office on Monday, Faury said Airbus must be ready to respond rapidly to a worsening international climate without saying what he was referring to.
"At the outset of 2025, we can all see that the international environment is deteriorating and growing in complexity. This is increasing the risks weighing on our activities," Faury said.
Trump, who has promised sweeping tariffs, stopped short of immediate duties on day one but directed federal agencies to investigate persistent U.S. trade deficits and unfair trade practices and alleged currency manipulation by other countries.
Faury told reporters earlier this month that European aerospace firms were bracing for "very strong" protectionism during the second term of Trump, who has defended the use of tariffs as part of his economic agenda to "put America first".
(Reporting by Tim Hepher, Editing by Louise Heavens and David Evans)
